As a fan of the original "The Twilight Zone", I was against the idea of a revival, this led to me avoiding this series for a long period of time, before I eventually sat down and watched the first episode of this series, which is the above titled "Evergreen".
I went into this with a clear view, I wasn't going to immediately judge the episode, I'd watch it all the way through and give it my final thoughts. It wasn't bad... until the ending came.
The ending was a big problem for me. I'm all for seeing bad endings, a lot of the older series episodes had them, generally my problem was with how it was handled overall. In that Jenna, is presented as a rather "innocent" teenager, isn't doing any harm to anybody during all of this. She's your typical teenager that's going through a phase that should eventually pass... only for her to end up in perhaps one of the most gruesome endings within the franchise.
Problem with this for me was, in the original, when someone met a gruesome fate, it was because they really were doing something wrong, they were shown to carry at least one of the Deadly Sins which eventually led to their fate, or they had some sort of flaw to them, that made you want to seem them get their comeuppance because of it. This, isn't the case, you're seeing a rather innocent girl (who didn't really do anything to deserve the ending she got), end up dead.
Now I keep saying the word "innocent" but the episode never shows Jenna doing anything that wrong. In the case of Logan, he was killed because he stabbed and beat up a guard, alright, however that's a lot worse than Jenna trying to escape, outside of that she doesn't present anything that would make reason for such a gruesome kind of ending. I also didn't find logic in the fact that Logan (who beat down a guy) was shown to have a trial to decide his fate and Jenna, is simply dragged into the van and taken away, no trial is shown, she's just taken immediately.
The ending however was the only thing that made this episode less than enjoyable. I loved this episode otherwise, the build up was nice, the character interaction was alright, the writing needed a lot of work though, there were a lot of inconsistencies with this one. The twist at the end was alright, I didn't like how it ended, but I'll give credit to the twist. As well as the twist of the younger sister turning on the older one because she's always 'messing things up', it's sort of ironic, when you consider that Jenna was supposed to be the 'bad seed' when in reality, she's pretty normal, compared to Jules who actually does become the 'bad seed' because of the community around her.
I think the biggest thing that bothered me about this episode might be the struggle that's pretty much shut down completely by the end of it. Jenna throughout the episode attempts to hold onto her personality and who she is, while Jules is the opposite seemingly falling right in line with the line of thinking. There isn't any big lesson, there isn't any development in the character, just the logic of "You're impossible to 'fix' so you must die. You're different, you must die." It certainly comes off as more of a twisted "Eye of the Beholder" (which I find ironic because I noticed this series has a remake of that very episode, go figure). However, the ending does nothing for Jenna, you spend 30-minutes watching her, and the end result just leads to her dying, after watching her claw to maintain her personality. Something as simple as an exact escape would have worked out great, it could have had an even bigger lasting impact on her life, instead she's just killed, which kind of makes the entire episode rather counterproductive.
Performance wise.. Amber Tamblyn steals this episode, while the dialogue can be a little awkward, she managed to work into it a strong performance. Her final scene within the episode was easily the best, almost chillingly real (which I'll admit was partially the reason why the ending did bother me) and hit-the-mark on the big reveal and what was going to happen in the situation.
The episode doesn't really have any moral or message to it, which I was kind of hoping that it might. This episode basically comes down to a creepy tale that honestly did make me think of "Goosebumps" only with an even more twisted kind of ending.
I would have preferred something else to end this episode, this isn't the kind of episode that should end in a death like that, especially considering the character of Jenna doing virtually nothing wrong within this episode. This episode makes for a good kind of scary story, but, I don't feel like this is the kind of episode that works well in this kind of series, it lacks a lot of the elements of what makes "The Twilight Zone, "The Twilight Zone".
All-in-all, just an episode that didn't end well nor fit for me. Good otherwise, but the ending really made an episode that could have been really strong and interesting, very lackluster
I went into this with a clear view, I wasn't going to immediately judge the episode, I'd watch it all the way through and give it my final thoughts. It wasn't bad... until the ending came.
The ending was a big problem for me. I'm all for seeing bad endings, a lot of the older series episodes had them, generally my problem was with how it was handled overall. In that Jenna, is presented as a rather "innocent" teenager, isn't doing any harm to anybody during all of this. She's your typical teenager that's going through a phase that should eventually pass... only for her to end up in perhaps one of the most gruesome endings within the franchise.
Problem with this for me was, in the original, when someone met a gruesome fate, it was because they really were doing something wrong, they were shown to carry at least one of the Deadly Sins which eventually led to their fate, or they had some sort of flaw to them, that made you want to seem them get their comeuppance because of it. This, isn't the case, you're seeing a rather innocent girl (who didn't really do anything to deserve the ending she got), end up dead.
Now I keep saying the word "innocent" but the episode never shows Jenna doing anything that wrong. In the case of Logan, he was killed because he stabbed and beat up a guard, alright, however that's a lot worse than Jenna trying to escape, outside of that she doesn't present anything that would make reason for such a gruesome kind of ending. I also didn't find logic in the fact that Logan (who beat down a guy) was shown to have a trial to decide his fate and Jenna, is simply dragged into the van and taken away, no trial is shown, she's just taken immediately.
The ending however was the only thing that made this episode less than enjoyable. I loved this episode otherwise, the build up was nice, the character interaction was alright, the writing needed a lot of work though, there were a lot of inconsistencies with this one. The twist at the end was alright, I didn't like how it ended, but I'll give credit to the twist. As well as the twist of the younger sister turning on the older one because she's always 'messing things up', it's sort of ironic, when you consider that Jenna was supposed to be the 'bad seed' when in reality, she's pretty normal, compared to Jules who actually does become the 'bad seed' because of the community around her.
I think the biggest thing that bothered me about this episode might be the struggle that's pretty much shut down completely by the end of it. Jenna throughout the episode attempts to hold onto her personality and who she is, while Jules is the opposite seemingly falling right in line with the line of thinking. There isn't any big lesson, there isn't any development in the character, just the logic of "You're impossible to 'fix' so you must die. You're different, you must die." It certainly comes off as more of a twisted "Eye of the Beholder" (which I find ironic because I noticed this series has a remake of that very episode, go figure). However, the ending does nothing for Jenna, you spend 30-minutes watching her, and the end result just leads to her dying, after watching her claw to maintain her personality. Something as simple as an exact escape would have worked out great, it could have had an even bigger lasting impact on her life, instead she's just killed, which kind of makes the entire episode rather counterproductive.
Performance wise.. Amber Tamblyn steals this episode, while the dialogue can be a little awkward, she managed to work into it a strong performance. Her final scene within the episode was easily the best, almost chillingly real (which I'll admit was partially the reason why the ending did bother me) and hit-the-mark on the big reveal and what was going to happen in the situation.
The episode doesn't really have any moral or message to it, which I was kind of hoping that it might. This episode basically comes down to a creepy tale that honestly did make me think of "Goosebumps" only with an even more twisted kind of ending.
I would have preferred something else to end this episode, this isn't the kind of episode that should end in a death like that, especially considering the character of Jenna doing virtually nothing wrong within this episode. This episode makes for a good kind of scary story, but, I don't feel like this is the kind of episode that works well in this kind of series, it lacks a lot of the elements of what makes "The Twilight Zone, "The Twilight Zone".
All-in-all, just an episode that didn't end well nor fit for me. Good otherwise, but the ending really made an episode that could have been really strong and interesting, very lackluster